Shot at about the same time as Monday's post. Cold river and ice flowing downstream on the Mississippi, the weird stuff that comes out of the Missouri River shaped like discs. There was a terrific comment to that post explaining how these things form: Often, when pondering the amazing amount of ice flowing down the Missouri River at times like these, folks will ask, "I wonder where that ice comes from?", usually imagining that it's being created in a certain place or kind of place then drifts down the river.
From what I gather, most of it is created everywhere in the river. Most of the ice is called frazil (or frazzle) ice. It is formed when small, needle-like ice crystals actually form in or on surface of the water as turbulence in the river causes some of the water to become supercooled, or just below freezing. These then begin to stick together, creating a slush. The current gathers the slush together and the frazil begins to freeze to each other. The tumbling action of the current and of slush blocks hitting each other and rolling off the banks and each other causes these circle "pancake ice" or "frazil pan" to form.
On very cold days, near zero, frazil sculptures can build up on the pans. As pans bump into each other, they may tilt up, then freeze to another pan, creating some of the towering iceberg structures.
On the Missouri, one of the most interesting things to me is how the ice appears white, despite the turbidity of the water.
Another ice formation you might see are large sheets of ice that break out of tributaries or in the eddies along the side of the river. If there is frozen border ice along the river and the river drops or rises dramatically, these sheets will break loose and go on down the river.
I've seen some as large as a row of barges. Awesome.
Here's a link to some basic river ice facts from the Army Corps of Engineers: http://www.crrel.usace.army.mil/ierd/ice_guide/iceguide.htm
Time for a few days out of the cold. Mrs. C and I are meeting up with U "R" Us in Las Vegas tonight and then heading out in the morning to Death Valley. We go there every few years for its wild, remote beauty. It's just 2 hours drive from Las Vegas and there's a very comfortable central village, Furnace Creek. Many pix sure to follow.
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More from Circus Harmony's show at the City Museum. The young women cantilevered from the ring in the top picture are the daughters of the director, Jessica Hentoff (I'm sorry I don't recall their first names. Jessica, send me a note and I'll fix this.) This is the pair in the spotlight from my post on New Years Day. Below, the whole St. Louis Arches troupe lines up for inspection with Abraham Adoka topping the pile.
TOMORROW: Thursday Arch Series. A cold one.
HEY, BY THE WAY, I keep forgetting to mention that I finally finished the selection and editing of the pix from our trip to Nepal and Tibet last September. I took something like five or six thousand snaps in two and a half weeks and got them culled down to a manageable number. All shot in RAW and buffed up in Photoshop. If you would like to see them, click here. 
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Regular readers may recall that I had a post on New Year's Day about our First Night festivities and particularly the troupe of young acrobats known as the St. Louis Arches. A couple of days later, I got an email from Jessica Hentoff, the artistic and executive director of Circus Harmony, the school and performance group that teaches "the art of life through circus education." There's a circus school in St. Louis! Jessica invited me to one of their rehearsals and shows at the wacky City Museum to meet the people and take some shots.This was some kind of fun. Most of the students are children and teens, although Jessica told me they had a student in her 80s. The big star of the moment is Abraham Adoka of Kenya, an acrobat, fire eater and extreme limbo performer. He will be artist in residence with Circus Harmony until May. So at this time St. Louis is the only place in the country where you can learn African acrobatics. This guy is stunning. There is a feature about him in a local newspaper here.I'm looking forward to shooting Circus Harmony's performers again. Come back for a few more circus tricks tomorrow. 
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They say the Mississippi would freeze over here from time to time but I cant find out when that last happened. (Anyone know?) The first lock and dam is not far north of here. I doubt it has happened since that was built. The Missouri River is undamed for a long way upstream but I've never heard of it freezing solid at St. Charles, Jefferson City or Kansas City.On Saturday I walked out onto Eads Bridge to see how the ice looked. I might have been staring into a giant petri dish. The ice comes downstream in swirling cells, riding the current, rotating individually and combining into primitive, chilly organisms. You have to drive up to the confluence of the great rivers to watch the mix. The Mississippi runs clear south of the lock and dam. The frozen cells come from the Missouri, spinning out into its partner like galaxies into the void. You can see a picture of this happening in an old post here. I have no idea how they form. Scientists, fill us in.I did get some other shooting done over the weekend. STL DPB is running away with the circus TOMORROW.
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A guest post today from team member ShadowyOne:
Going along with the "snowy statues" theme, Thursday afternoon your guest poster ShadowyOne was at Art Hill in Forest Park, a famous local spot for sledding. The sledding hill is always mobbed after any snowstorm. Though I took plenty of crowd/sledding scenes, every time I go to the Art Museum after it snows, I always find myself attracted to the way the snow collects in the laps of the two seated statues flanking the main entrance.
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The view from my office window down to Citygarden on a cold, snowy day. Everybody's favorite sculpture, Eros Bendato, is frozen to its plinth. Pertanto, congelato. 
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We had some snow last night, enough to make the morning commute treacherous. The eastern two-thirds of the US is really in the freezer, with low temperatures in St. Louis for tonight and tomorrow night predicted to be about 0 F. or -18 C. Still, there's a good side to it. This was Citygarden's first complete snow cover since it opened last summer. Pinocchio here exults in it, although with that cold compress on his eyes I wondered if he had a migraine.
Shot at about the same time as Monday's post. Cold river and ice flowing downstream on the Mississippi, the weird stuff that comes out of the Missouri River shaped like discs. There was a terrific comment to that post explaining how these things form: 
